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<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Dear all,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">I have some questions
concerning work with
Concord in WordSmith 4.0 (excuse my incompetence or in case I
overlooked an
apparent mistake).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">In the 3.0 version I used the
Collocation
function to look for words with a particular suffix or ending (in case
it
covers more or less than a real morpheme). For this purpose I used a
truncated
search, e.g. “*ism” and the set the collocation horizon to 0/0.
Strictly
speaking, the programme then did not really calculate collocations as
words
appearing to the left or the right of the search string, but just
produced a
list of the centre words. As this, however, covered all –ism-words
(“intellectualism”, “capitalism”, “occultism”, etc.), this was exactly
what I
wanted.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Now in the 4.0 version, I can
no longer choose
a zero horizon – neither to the left nor to the right. This problem
can,
however, be solved by clicking on the centre column in the
Collocations, which
orders the words according to the frequencies at which they appear as
the
central word, which gives me the same results as the procedure just
described
for 3.0. The problem that I have is that the Collocation function does
not give
me the full version of the central word, but just the first two letters
(e.g.
“in”, “ca”, “oc”). If there are not that many, I may be able to guess
the word,
but in other cases this is impossible. As I am not the most intelligent
and
sophisticated user of WordSmith, I doubt that this problem is due to my
challenging demands, but rather a result of me missing some setting
options or
something similar. But I seem to be unable to detect what I am
missing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">A second, probably similarly
simple problem
is that I seem to be unable to exclude words if working with a
truncated search
word. E.g. if looking for synthetic comparatives in English, using
“*er” as my
target, I would like the programme to ignore obvious high-frequency
words such
as “ever”, “never”, “her”, “after” etc. This was possible with
WordSmith 3.0,
but I cannot find the equivalent function in the 4.0 version.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The third problem concerns the
use of
search files. Examining corpora concentrating on particular discourses
(e.g.
women’s magazines, wellness brochures, popular books promoting
lifestyle
changes, etc.), I have started to use files comprising more exhaustive
lists of
particular lexical fields, e.g. nutrients, social relations, diseases,
etc.
This allows me to compare the extent to which a specific discourse
focuses, for
instance, on nutritional aspects of food or takes a rather pathological
view of
life (at least on a superficial level). Now I have put together a heavy
list of
pathological terminology composed of internet resources and some
initial
searches. This covers some 4,000 expressions. I was not really
surprised that
WordSmith could not finish checking the occurrence of these expressions
in a
600,000 word corpus, considering that I do not have an ultrafast
computer. I
was just wondering whether there is any limit to a search file (say 500
lines
or something like that) with which you can successfully perform such
searches
even with a moderately fast computer.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Any help would be highly
appreciated </span>:-)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Georg</span></p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
*******************************************************************************
* Mag. Dr. Georg Marko, M.A., Vertragsassistent
* Institut fuer Anglistik (Department of English Studies)
* Karl-Franzens-Universitaet Graz
* Heinrichstrasse 36, A-8010 Graz
* tel.: +43/316/380-2474
* e-mail: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:georg.marko@kfunigraz.ac.at">georg.marko@kfunigraz.ac.at</a>
*******************************************************************************
"I drew a treasure map on your hand"
Ani diFranco
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